Vantaggi
Some of the smartest people I've ever had the pleasure of working with were at SGS Testcom in the Rancho Cordova office.
Svantaggi
High management turnover - eight IT Operations Managers and seven Program Managers in nine years. Discounted staff opinions and recommendations - used senior staff as scapegoats when beneficial to senior management. Upper management encourages in-fighting among staff and uses some staff to snitch on others. They don't want truth from employees, they want to be parroted back their own opinions. Benefits were low end and high cost to the employee. Salaries were hit and miss, if you were not someone that management felt was valuable or important, you were lucky to be compensated at the legal minimum. Raises and bonuses were intermittent, and most raises tended to fall into the range of a cost of living increase, not a real raise. No real path for advancement, no training or mentoring offered or provided to most staff when actually given a promotion. Internal politics are unhealthy and cause many staff to be more concerned about not making onto a "hit list", than performing excellent work. Many times management refused to spend money on necessary infrastructure as it would affect their bonuses, so staff were many times forced to "figure it out" and come up with solutions to issues that were temporary fixes at best. Management would later on get upset when the fixes failed, and would turn it around onto the staff for "not pushing more" to really resolve the issue.